Wildlife Preservation
by Night2Fall
Summary: The interviewer travels to Namibia to learn how humans and animals fared amidst sand, tall grass and zombies. Rated T for... well, zombies, anyone?


Disclaimer: I don't own World War Z. Sort of necessary to point that out, right?

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 **Fort Namutoni, Etosha Province, United States of Southern Africa**

 **[Namutoni is an old colonial fortress which has been the center of one of the visitor camps in the Etosha National Park in pre-war times. Becoming a safe haven for roughly five hundred refugees during the war, nowadays it houses, among the still striving community, the central office of the Southern Africa Wildlife Observation Board, which is studying the animal populations in the USSA. One of their field observers is Andy Schüler. The barrel-chested ranger has his jeep parked at a man-made stand post and while we speak he makes notes every now and then, when animals approach the water.]**

There was one huge advantage Namibia had, when the crisis hit home: It had the second lowest population density worldwide, the only one lower on the ladder being Mongolia. And we didn't have to worry about thousands of panicking Chinese heading North.

Of course, the country was way too close to the first epicenter of the plague to remain unshaved. We got our fair share of refugees during the Panic in South Africa, but we still fared pretty well. Namibia itself didn't have a Panic of its own, just the majority of Keetmanshoop making haste to go north, as they were too close to the floppy ears'(1) border. You see, for Southern Africa the crisis started in Cape Town and literally ate it's way north from there, but the floppy ears would rather not turn to the desert if they didn't have to. As would everyone else, by the way. People didn't see much good in heading for a country that would require crossing the Kalahari or the Namib first. Eventually some tried whatsoever, we had one of the best health care systems of pre-war Africa, that's probably what drew them. Some made it, but the unlucky majority... the bushmen still find corpses in the desert.

Now, Namibia consists mainly of small hamlets and farms, that are mostly so remote they can only be reached by car or a healthy lot of trekking, and less major cities than fingers on both your hands. Distance was what saved a lot of people. Infected refugees usually turned before they reached any settlement by car or foot and it wasn't long until there were regular roadblocks on the A roads. Sniffers and all. No getting past that. Airtravel though... That's what cost us Windhoek.

Actually, it was pretty straight forward: Infected refugees arrived by plane, reached the biggest city Namibia had to offer, turned, bit unsuspecting people, vicious circle of the apocalypse. The army didn't even try. They established a huge perimeter around Windhoek, couple of checkpoints, but no one was allowed to go near the damn thing. And amazingly, it worked. The horde never left the city until the floppy ears showed up to shoot them all! As far as I know, the guards didn't let a single jackal into the death zone, but they extracted a lot of people in the beginning and the odd survivalist every now and then.

That was our one, major outbreak. Yeah, Zack harassed the coastal cities and we had quite a lot of them moving in from the north. Battle of Namutoni, battle of Tsumeb, but no swarms. The buggers were simply too widespread. If you came across one in the wilderness and let it moan, fine, smash his skull, stand on you're toes for the rest of the day, but normally he wouldn't draw another ghoul. That's why the Windhoek Death Zone worked so well. The perimeter was big enough to not let those inside register... food in any way, so they happily shuffled around the city. Sure, we had zombies in the countryside, but never in force and most of the farms were semi-autonomous from the get go. The army held the country losely together, they checked regularly with everyone, fought Zack when he got cocky in one place, organized the trade-convoys, horse-drawn carriages, mind you, and did an overall good job without growing too power hungry. They knew they were on a tight budget and they needed friendly farmers as much as the farmers needed scuffproof killers when shit went down.

 **That sounds pretty peaceful. By Zombie-War Standards.**

Yep. Disagreeable in many ways, but we managed. Tsumeb sort of got the shit end of the stick, first they had to deal with a swarm entering from Angola, and then the man who worked a miracle by organizing the defense turned out to be a power-crazy psychopath who made the town his own private kingdom during wartime. From what I know, they managed to suffocate him in his sleep, when the floppy ears were knocking on the door.

But that's not, what you're here for, isn't it?

 **No, not really. I'd like to hear about the wildlife.**

And how the lot of us survived on a diet of rhino steaks and dried kudu meat. This was a veggie-free country throughout the whole war. **[Chuckles]**

No, seriously now. Populations have been rising throughout the war and ever since. It's starting to get a bit creepy.

Zombies were no real threat to animals. The only species that were prone to fall to Zack were those without the physical means to possibly evade him. If a zombie was close, the wild animals made a run for it, all of them, from elephant down to tsetse-fly. They knew, somehow, by smell or sixth sense or some other primeval instinct, they always knew. The only species, apparently, which doesn't have this early warning system is homo sapiens.

Now, I've heard lots of stories about cows and sheep and other domesticated animals getting ripped apart by the living dead, but that was hardly the case for the wild animals of Africa. First of all, they weren't restricted. The fences the farmers would put up around their property were a joke to any living antelope. They can make standing jumps of up to ten feet, even the big kudus. And a fleeing elephant or rhino would not even notice anything but the sturdiest fences and even if they noticed them, they would still get through without any harm to themselves.

Secondly, they were adapted to the wilderness and therefore adapted to fleeing enemies which were a lot faster than a walking zombie. Think about it. A zombie doing five kilometers per hour can be deemed a sprinter of its kind. You didn't have to be a cheetah to outrun them plus the animals had the stamina to run long enough for the zombies to lose their trail.

The biggest threat for animals in Africa were and still are sentient human beings and we weren't the only ones to shoot them for the cooking pot in wartime. Still, the animals prospered. The most commonly hunted animals like Oryx, Zebra or Springbok were already there in relative abundance and the overall numbers of humans in Africa had decreased severely in comparison to the numbers of animals. No poachers shooting rhinos and selling their horns to China, no big game hunters eager to bring a stuffed lions head home, no warlords going for elephants to finance their weapons by selling ivory. Before the war, there were about five thousand black rhinos left in the world. Nowadays, we have fifteen thousand in Etosha alone.

That doesn't mean that zombies didn't get any wild animals. Seals were, ahem, sitting ducks if they went to the shore and a zombie came out of the waves. Cape Cross became a slaughterhouse if ever there was one. Or take a look at North-West Africa. The swarms up there didn't leave as much as ants behind. Simply too many, no way to run for the animals. If these swarms had decided to turn south, we would have had it, but there were enough governments or resembling ... things(2) in central Africa which had implemented Redeker to create distraction. We didn't know we owed them until the end of the war. Though I guess, no one is really eager to pay them back in any kind of way.

Back to the wildlife: Grass eaters had the nasty habit of dropping dead. I once came across a whole herd of zebras just spread across the Kalahari. No wounds, no anything. They had just died of fear, the smell of zombies caused their bodies to overreact in a manner they couldn't withstand. Stroke, the lot of them. We had some spare room in the caravan, but we had to leave plenty of good meat to the jackals. Apparently it happened to other animals as well, antelopes, giraffes, the occasional wildebeest and domesticated animals. But that was just during the outbreak. Would never happen to the current generations.

Now, another thing that really surprised me was that scavengers would go for a dead zombie. Jackals, vultures and hyenas would run as any other animal, but if they came across a corpse, they would take a bite and drop dead. Seems evolution screwed up at least one thing. And they wouldn't learn. Dogs were taught all around to stay away from infected corpses. Couldn't do that to wildlife scavengers, obviously. Today jackals are the single most endangered species in Namibia. Thanks to all those zombie-slayers who didn't burn the corpses afterwards.

And then we had scenes where animals would turn on zombies. I've seen this only once myself, but there is enough famous evidence of other happenings. In my case it was a rhino, chased by a group of thirty zombies. They hadn't planned, of course not, but they had the rhino trapped in a dead end in the Kuiseb canyons. Now, the beast was as frightened as nature could allow it to be, and at the same time it was getting surrounded and angry and that's a bad mixture, especially for a rhino. Suddenly it went completely berserk and charged the horde. Trampled its way out of the dead end, but instead of running away it turned and charged again. And again. Eventually it died, a zombie had managed to bite and infect, but the horde was down to nine members, three of them crawlers. We climbed down, finished them off and referred to it later jokingly as mercy-killing, as the rest of the gang had been mauled and maimed by the rhino beyond all recognition.

Of course that didn't happen too often and with mixed efficiency. Odds that a crazed out Oryx would kill a zombie are pretty low. But if Zack really pissed off one of the heavy hitters, he'd pay dearly. In the camp they like to show this tape from a happening here in Etosha. That was shortly after the siege of Namutoni and there were still bigger groups of zombies around. A horde of more than a hundred had taken up the scent of an elephant herd. The beasts kept their cool, almost unbelievable, as if they knew they would easily get away. But then one of their babies tripped, fell and was unable to keep the pace afterwards. So, what do the big grey ones do? The cows formed a wall in front of their little one, tried to scare Zack with trumpeting and flapping their ears, but when the horde was too close, they went as mad as the rhino I had seen. Trampled the whole horde into the ground. Without a single elephant lost. That was a damn boost to morale, I can tell you.

Predators had it a little bit more difficult, as they had to share territory with something sending every kind of prey running. Lions became really, really humble. Hardly saw them anymore and they're still highly careful and shy as hell. Things didn't start out for the lions that well, because a lion's roar can be heard for miles and miles, that's what is supposed to do, signal any other pride that the territory is taken. Obviously this attracted zombies and although they were widespread, roaring lions did one hell of a job in creating hordes. By the way, this phenomenon showed us that Zack's hearing isn't as good as the hearing of a living human, we had scouts who could still hear the lion quite clearly and the zombies basically next to them carried on as if nothing happened. Anyhow, the lions actually were smart enough to cease roaring completely after something like three years, which was about time. We had reports of prides ripped to pieces, because they had been surrounded. Our vet at Namutoni is supporting the thesis, that following generations may not even have the ability to roar. So much for the "King of Animals".

Leopards fared way better, but then, they had more or less adapted to cities as well in quite short a time. Cheetahs, well, different story. They are designed to avoid any fight and with the smell of zombies present they hardly dared moving. Strained the poor beasts, to constantly stand on their toes. Not too many left and they already suffered from a genetic bottleneck long before the war. Most of them live in captivity today and it's almost impossible to return them to the wild, because they can't be taught to hunt.

 **Did the predators pose a serious threat?**

"Serious threat"? None at all. If the wild animals of Africa would usually pose a threat to mankind, there would not be a single human being left in Africa. Full stop, exclamation mark.

Alright, if you're referring to the F-critters in America and Europe, no, there was nothing similar happening to the wild animals. F-critters are hostile towards humans, because they never had any dread on them. They are former pets, the lot of them, at least at the roots. Wild animals run from humans almost as franticly as they run from the living dead.

Now, I appreciate the current positive development and I seriously think it's a good thing to happen. But for the record I need to mention the backdrop: All out warfare that nearly wiped out humankind. I know you know it and everyone who listens to this in the near future will know it, but you're shelving this for the long con, aren't you? And I don't want future generations to remember me as a cynic and an asshole who was happily cooing over all the newborn elephants without acknowledging what the world endured all around him. As wonderful as it is to see the populations rise, the price the world paid was almost unbearable. I lost friends and family, when Windhoek was overrun, I'm completely on the same page with everyone out there who lost a loved one.

 **It's alright. Thank you for you're clear position on this matter. Can I have some words about the liberation in conclusion?**

If you can call it that. Mind you, over 85% of the population were safe and sound inside the cities or similar retreat posts and the remaining 15% were either bushmen or roadsters or soldiers. There was a maddeningly high percentage of Namibians who hadn't seen a single zombie throughout the whole war. No, it wasn't a liberation, it was rather like ... a mother cleaning up her child's room, although the child has a _very_ valid argument that the room isn't in too bad a shape.

We hadn't sent anyone to Honolulu, because there was a reasonable fight about who the hell it should be. Well, we had radio contact with the floppy ears and that's how we learned of the plans for going on the offensive. As if. We were doing pretty well, we didn't even have the need to implement the Redeker plan, thank God for that, but we were way to small in numbers to purge the whole fucking countryside. Not to mention Windhoek.

As we were conveniently leaderless, the floppy ears decided to clean up our mess once their own home was in order. Quick and painless. They actually announced it a long time in advance over the radio, invited everyone who wanted to fight into their army and asked our military to perform scout and pathfinder duties. **[He heaves a deep sigh and grimaces]** Well, it was probably for the best. We could never have done it. Never. Ever. And you have to give the floppy ears credit for not simply absorbing Namibia and send us some Kimberley-assholes(3) to make the rules. I've never been a huge fan of South Africa personally and it's hard for me to swallow my pride and acknowledge that this whole country was cleaned up by floppy-ears. **[He manages a crooked smile]**

But at least I am finally giving them the credit. There are some people around who are constantly lamenting the fact that Namibia as we knew it has been annulled, but frankly, before the war no one would have said: "Hey guys, I'm Namibian." Maybe the white immigrants, after a generation or two, but even there you had a German-Namibian in contrast to, for example, an English-Namibian. And among the natives, good Lord, they referred to themselves as Damara, Himba, San, Herero or whatnot, but never as Namibians. I don't give a damn that there is no more "Namibia", but a number of provinces(4) of the USSA. The land hasn't changed after all and the politics don't bother me. As I said, for me it was hardest to bury my full grown hatred of the floppy-ears, but after all, well, we're are all humans and it was one of the few good things of this war, that it made us all hack it together.

 **[We both fall silent as a huge herd of wildebeest approaches the stand post. The other animals nearby, ostriches, springboks and a group of eleven zebras, quickly make room, as hundreds of the big, grey beasts march into the water to drink. A bull with giant horns is carefully watching, while the rearguard of the herd finally comes in sight. A human skull is impaled on one of his horns. Andy leans over his notes and scribbles something down: 500.]**

Wouldn't have seen anything like that before the war. Now let's just hope humankind will be able to thrive as well in the years to come.

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1 Liberal translation of the German pejorative term "Schlappohren" some Namibians use on their southern neighbors.

2 Up till printing the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Central Africa are split between different rivaling warlords who are well capable of defending themselves against the undead, but fight among each other and aren't exactly cooperative in letting the UN help in the clean-up

3 While leaving Kimberley after the implementation of Redeker, the current South African government is still being referred to as the Kimberley-government.

4 Six in total: Etosha, Windhoek, Namib, Waterberg, Skeleton-Coast and Lüderitz


End file.
